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So much has been written about the power of praise. We know from Bible examples that God will put a new song in your heart. He sings over us, so there are songs all around us. It really is amazing to thing about. So, how is your praise life? Are you taking time to praise and worship God everyday. If we want to rise above the circumstances of life, we will need a song in our heart. The cursed earth can suck life out of you, you renew your strength in His presence….reading His Word, singing His praises, or just breathing in the Life of God. To stay full, we get to take every opportunity we have to spend time with God. Each day we don’t, we are telling God that we can do life without Him. Yikes!!! I want to rely on Him more today than yesterday, so instead of less time with Him, I want more. Often it seems like the times that we need more time with Him is when we have less time in the natural because of raising children, or job schedules, running kids around, or whatever keeps us busy. Those are the times to get creative. Take a praise and worship cd with you, or listen to great Christian music on the radio. Have a teaching CD in the car, or even the Bible on CD. Turn off the TV at home, and enjoy the silence, or listen to some uplifting music. Be creative and make the most of every opportunity to get refilled. It is the only way we can rise above circumstances of life….stay filled up with the power of God. Let His song, bring hope to your life.

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We have a family that loves to sing. We sing in the shower, sing in the car, on the riding lawnmower, and around the living room. We love to sing together. What we really love to do is sing praise and worship songs. We have instruments all over our house, pianos, guitars, a cello, a couple of baritones, a banjo, a mandolin and we recently added a saxophone and a accordion. So, not only do we use our voices to praise God, we use instruments too. There are great examples in the Bible of David in the Old Testament and Paul and Silas in the New Testament singing their way through a storm. Their storm landed them in jail. Different kinds of storms come to everyone. Things don’t always go perfectly, and when that happens instead of getting upset and worried, we can sing. We can tell our soul to bless the Lord, we can just rejoice in the midst of any situation. What the enemy wants for our destruction, Jesus can turn around for our good. So to get through hard times, begin by praising God. Sing out loud, sing a song you know, or one that you make up. Some of the most beautiful and meaningful songs come from a heart that praises through the storm. So open up your mouth and make a joyful noise….you are going to make it, and God is at work within you. Be encouraged today, hope is on its way.

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Rising above circumstances and living a life of hope requires having a pure heart. For us to have the kind of pure heart that a child has, we can choose to be like Mary instead of Martha in the Bible. What mattered most and was most important? According to Jesus, Mary got it right. It was time spent in the presence of God. Taking a drink from the fountain of life. Being amazed by His wisdom. Ignoring unimportant distractions. Listening to the warmth of His voice. Enjoying incredible fellowship. Meditating on His promises. Giving the seed of the Word the right things to cause germination. All these things take time. Time is a precious commodity, and something that children seem to have much more of than adults. To become and remain pure in heart, it takes time in the presence of Jesus. He asks us to sit at His feet. What the world calls waste, God calls worship! He gives us permission to be still! When we are filled to the brim with the presence of God, our motives, our attitudes and our actions will be much more Christ-like, than if we’re just trying our best in our own strength. Then we will rise about whatever circumstance we are facing. Let’s start with a pure heart. It is one of the basics that we can get good at. Put agendas aside, and anything else that clutters up the chambers of your heart. Let’s let the life of God pulsate through our being because we have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus.

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The Christian group 4Him sings a song that is called the Basics of Life. I heard that song recently and have been meditating on the fact that as believers it is so important to have a good, solid foundation, and to have the basics down pat in our life. To live hope filled lives, we need to put some more mortar between our own bricks (foundation), so that we can really know what we believe and why. The 4 basics that the 4Him song talks about are: a pure heart, a deep love, faith firmly grounded, and hope that endures for all time. Let’s talk about a pure heart. In Ps 51:10, David asks the Lord to create in him a pure heart when the prophet Nathan came to him after he had committed adultery. David had made wrong choices, and needed to be washed clean. He realized his need for a clean heart and repented to God. Sin separated him from God, and repentance reunited him with God. A pure heart really is a choice we make. It starts with repentance, and then is determined by our motives, our attitudes, and our actions. To be pure in heart really means to become childlike. Children have a wonderfully simple way of looking at things. They are trusting, transparent, carefree, humble, full of compassion and forgiveness, and full of wonder and amazement. Today is your day to begin again with a pure heart. Hope abounds for you today.

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Are you needing joy and peace in your life today? Be encouraged – if you’re a believer, joy and peace live in your inner man. Are big challenges facing you today? You can abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit, believing that God is at work on your behalf, and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit are yours. Sometimes we just need to shake ourselves out of our stupor and realize, the God of the Universe is our peace. He not only brings peace, which is the word shalom, that means nothing missing and nothing broken, but He is our peace, who has broken down every wall. There is nothing that is too difficult for you. You have the Power of the Holy Spirit on the inside of you and you will overcome. Whatever you face is not bigger than the God who lives within you. If you start to think you’re not going to over come, or make it through, begin believing that you will. Capture any thought that is against God’s plan for your life. If you think defeat, capture that thought and fill your mind with scriptures about victory. Rehearse your past victories, and remember what God has done for you in the past, He will do again. Keep sowing good seeds; with your thought life, and with your words and actions. Keep on doing what is right and you will reap if you don’t grow weary, and if you don’t give up. The joy and peace you are looking for are within you! Jesus is the joy of our salvation, and He gives us peace that passes all understanding. Your day is looking brighter already. Those mountains just became molehills, and you are going over, not under. You have what it takes to overcome….it is within you. Your future is filled with hope!

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Often when things aren’t going as smoothly as we hoped, we doubt God’s Word, or doubt our ability to hear from God, or doubt that what we have believed in the past is still the truth. But as believers, we need to stand firm and not be shaken. We can abound in hope that what God has said is still what He means. We are still His sheep that still know His voice, and that we will stand strong and continue to believe and feed our faith, and starve our doubts. When our faith becomes weak, we begin to believe the deception of the evil one, and our faith can waver. That causes confusion and we know who the author of confusion is – the devil. What is necessary is that we continue hearing and being saturated with the Word and strengthening our faith, so that we can experience joy and peace in believing. In Romans 15, it talks about bearing one another’s burdens, and living selflessly, living in unity, with one mind and one mouth glorifying God the Father, which are principles we live by as believers. Paul talks about encouraging one another, and that when he did come to Corinth, he would come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. We as believers want to fulfill our mission on the earth (like Paul was doing on his travels), which is to lead as many people as we can to Christ. So our believing needs to be such that we know that we know that we know, God’s Word is true. Then we can abound and overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can accomplish all that God has called us to do – no doubt about it! That is hope filled living!

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How would it feel to be an eagle flying high overhead? Pretty Awesome I bet! The Bible is full of metaphors that illustrate how we can rise above circumstances. Hi this is Dorette Schaal with an encouraging word for your day. Because we live on an earth with a curse, it is easy for us to be sucked into all the negativity around us, and for circumstances and situations of life to speak to us more loudly than God’s Word does. But if we want to rise above, we need to be renewed in God’s Word everyday. Rising higher means we walk the plan and path that God has for us, and are not moved by the distractions that are all around. We can live hope filled lives, and we can rise above! Be encouraged today!

Recently, as I was listening to our radio station KAGF at 105.5 FM, I heard a scripture that just became a freshly spoken word to me. It is found in Romans 15:13 and it says, “Now may the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” As soon as I heard the words spoken (faith comes by hearing- Rom 10:17), I got excited. There are several ways to look at that scripture – the most obvious is that when you become a believer, joy and peace fill your heart. A second way to look at it is that when you need joy and peace, believe that God will give it to you, and you will receive it. A third way, and the one that ministered to me was that because we are believers, joy and peace take up residence in us. When we choose to believe what the Word says, in the face of difficult circumstances, or doubts that discourage us, joy and peace will result. What a beautiful way to live! When we realize and truly recognize that the God of the Universe, the King of Majesty lives on the inside of us, we are filled up with hope to believe for everything God has for us. That’s rising above circumstances and living on a higher plane, where the cares of life and the curse on the earth, don’t have the ability to pull us down, but we can live on top. That’s a great place to be.

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What is passion? Most of the time we think of it romantically. We are passionately in love with our mate (I hope you are!!!) Or the passion of your heart is the dream you hold dear. We can be passionate about a hobby, or even a sport (I know you guys love football!). What we should be most passionate about is worshipping God. Whether you belong in the “joyful noise section”, or have the voice of an angel, we are created to worship. In the presence of His Majesty, our King, we expose our hearts to God, and he lavishes His love on us. Then we get to live out our purpose on the earth, which is to love others with the same love we have received. We love the world enough to help them out of darkness, and lift them into the arms of Jesus where they have life and light everlasting. That’s passion and purpose in motion!
So this month, I’m thankful that I’ve been lifted from the pit, and can now proclaim the praises of Him who has called me, out of darkness and into His marvelous light!

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I had the beautiful opportunity recently to be with a large group of my friends in ministry. We were all at a women’s conference in Seattle, and had a tremendous time. It’s an awesome time to get full of the Word and ready to live life with more passion and purpose than before.
As Thanksgiving approaches, I know I have so many things for which I am grateful. One thing that I am thankful for is the opportunity in Christ to live life with passion and purpose. It is an awesome thing to know that God has placed us here at this time, to accomplish His will on the earth. He’s entrusted so much to us, and He wants us to live life full! We can make each day count and expect to live life by design and not by default. How sad it would be to reach the end of our days and know that we didn’t live up to our potential. Savor each moment and determine to live life with passion and purpose with a thankful heart. The Lord will fulfill his purpose in you.

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Have you ever run out of a staple in your house, when you really need it? That happened with me recently, when we had out of town guests, and I was totally out of eggs for breakfast. How can an experienced cook, who raises chickens, be without eggs? Good question, but it happened. Thank God for grocery stores that are close by. It is no fun to lack when you have need….it works with money, time, and lots of other things. So can we really believe it when it says in James chapter 1 that we can lack nothing? The Message Bible says it this way, become mature and well developed, not deficient in any way. If we believe what the Word of God has to say, we can be well rounded and well grounded in every area of life. As people who ready, study and meditate on the Word, we can learn how to handle every situation. One of the greatest ways this works is in wisdom. Jesus said if we lack wisdom, just to ask Him for it, and it would be given. We have the mind of Christ, and can know the heart of God, so wisdom should never be lacking in our life. It should be a staple, that we always have! If you need it, just ask! We have not, because we ask not! In Jesus….we lack nothing.

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